The R. M. Bohart Museum of Entomology founded in 1946, resides on the Davis campus of the University of California. It is dedicated to teaching, research and service, and has the seventh largest insect collection in North America, which is worldwide in coverage. The collection holdings total more than seven million specimens, and focus on terrestrial and fresh water invertebrates. The museum is also home of the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity of California’s deserts, mountains, coast and great central valley.

The collections in the Bohart Museum began as the contents of two Schmitt boxes. From there they developed as teaching and research collections for the Department of Entomology, at the University of California Farm in Davis in 1946. In 1966 the decision was made to maintain a type collection, which now contains more than 1500 primary types. By 1969 the collection consisted of 100,000 specimens. In 1983 the Entomology Research Collection was officially named after Professor Emeritus Richard M. Bohart. By 1995 collection holdings had grown to six million curated specimens. The museum moved into a new facility funded by the National Science Foundation and the University of California, Davis.

The museum now houses more than 7 million specimens and the collections are growing at the rate of about 50,000 specimens each year. Two biological infrastructure grants have been received from the National Science Foundation. The first grant (1999) was to improve the scale insect collection. A more recent grant supports renovation and integration of existing mosquito collections and future donations to them.